alstry (35.84)

YOU DIE if Money Runs Out

20

Publicly funded Grady Memorial Hospital has served as a lifeline for this city's indigent for more than a century, but a plan to shutter its dialysis clinic has sparked a lawsuit on behalf of dozens of undocumented immigrants who say the decision amounts to a death sentence.

The case in Fulton County Superior Court throws into sharp relief some of the hottest issues in ongoing skirmishes over health care and the government's role in providing medical services: how and whether undocumented aliens should receive free treatment, and how far hospitals must go to provide lifesaving care for them.

"The issue is, do my clients have a fundamental right to life?" said Lindsay Jones, an attorney for the plaintiffs, during a packed hearing before Judge Ural Glanville on Wednesday.

Mr. Jones said one elderly patient, a partially paralyzed and undocumented immigrant from Colombia who was wheeled into the courtroom on a bed, recently returned from Florida after being told he wasn't immediately eligible for regular dialysis treatment there. He had been receiving such treatment at Grady.

While I usually agree with your posts, and find them very informative, this one is not to be remembered in that category. The overall issue is whether or not illegal immigrants have a right to health care in this country. By law, an illegal immigrant should be returned to their home country. To stay here is, well, illegal. So, they really don't, or I should say shouldn't, have a voice at all whether the government has to provide them health care. All the government should do is extradite them back to their orginal country. To post this comment is to verify how screwed up your profession, and the law itself, can be.

As time runs out on Alstry's prediction, we're going to see the measures he is willing to go to to get his point across. No longer are the statistically relevant blogs and comments going to be enough. As he feels the embarassing end to an embarassing prediction approach, it will be time to turn up the volume in an attempt to recuit more last minute followers.

Make no mistake; we are approaching what I will call the MOAFP, or Mother Of All Failed Predictions. Just look at these recent headlines;

There can be little doubt at this point that the MOAFP is upon us! As Alstry realizes he is in the MOAFP Zone he will only have two choices left; fade away into obscurity, or shout it louder and louder.... So ask yourself, which do YOU think is more likely?!?!

best of luck alstry, you got about a week. If all else fails, maybe you could do something extreme to fulfill your prediction. I guess you could just say moap 09, which would be inline with your previous MO. 9/09/09, after all, is two weeks gone.

BTW: Anyone in that has lived in Atlanta for more than a month can tell you that if you need urgent trauma care (gun shot, auto accident...) Grady is top notch. Once you are stablized you need to be transported somewhere else. The place is scary and poorly run. This has been the case for decades.

"The overall issue is whether or not illegal immigrants have a right to health care in this country. By law, an illegal immigrant should be returned to their home country."

When government fails to enforce a law, in this case, deporting people who are illegally in the US, you're saying we should just let them die because they shouldn't be here?

Is that a serious argument about refusing people care whose lives might be at stake, or am I misunderstanding your point?

You might think you're "right" because they are "illegal" but that doesn't excuse our country, hospitals, and citizens from not helping people who are sick and dying because we failed to deport them or failed to prevent them from coming into the country!

That's immoral.

Either enforce immigration laws, or change them if they are empty laws, rarely enforced. But, don't not enforce laws (or make laws that are unenforceable) and then use the fact that people are here "illegally" to not help them.

you ask: "The question is--- does our Gov't failure to enforce EXISTING immigration laws put the onus on us as legel citizens, to provide?"

I just look at the question differently in terms of providing care to people in dire need. I don't think there is any excuse NOT to provide it. In other words, the onus is always on us -- regardless of what the gov't does or doesn't do -- on us, as human beings whether we are legal citizens, or not legal, to help someone in serious need of care.

There are always reasons to be found not to help - ie) because "they" are:

"lepers"

"untouchables"

"illegals"

"fill-in-the-blank"

but I believe there is never a reason not to help.

The outrage, I believe, should be directed at the government's total fail to enforce a law, and not directed at the people who broke the law, didn't receive any consequences, and then developed a life-threatening illness.

I don't think it would be necessary to give any part of our futures to help, if the government would get out of the way and let people actually earn a living and keep most of what they earned, we would have plenty of resources to help those that are truly less fortunate than we are.

--- please see this Peter Schiff video for his thoughts on immigration. I agree with what he is saying there.

Lydia, help a homeless Vet, or your neighbor, who's husband has cancer, and just got laid off, with 4 kids. Prioritize. I help many, but don't think "helping" should be reduced to poliical process, namely, appropriation via taxation. I want to decide. BTW Huge Schiff fan. You do raise some good points. I'm with you many of them.